In a recent publication by members of the SWell Lab, we demonstrate that most romantic relationships are formed within a platonic friendship, a phenomenon that is mostly overlooked by the current published literature.
After this work was published online in July of 2021, it went viral. The research was covered by more than 75 media outlets around the globe, including The New York Times, CNN, the Guardian, and CBC. It has an attention score of 620 per Altmetric, making it the 17th highest scoring research output ever in the journal and placing it in the top 1% of all research outputs of the same age, and it has already been viewed or downloaded more than 31,000 times. The article is featured in the “most read” tab on the journal website for reads and views in the past 6 months, and when it was shared by a member on the popular r/science forum on reddit it garnered nearly 25k upvotes. Read more here!
Citation: Stinson, D.A., Cameron, J.J., & Hoplock, L.B. (2022). The friends-to-lovers pathway to romance: Prevalent, preferred, and overlooked by science. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 13, 562-571. https://doi.org/10.1177/19485506211026992